Prosecutors always expand laws far beyond their intent. Attorneys in civil cases do the same. For example, the 1970 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act was passed in order to make it easier for the government to convict members of the Mafia. However, the law, despite its intent, was quickly expanded by prosecutors and attorneys and used in cases against pro-life activists, Catholic bishops, corporations accused of hiring illegal immigrants, and in divorce cases. "Junk bond king" Michael Milken, a person with no ties to organized crime, was threatened with indictment under the RICO Act. Prosecutors have found that the asset freeze provision in the Act is a convenient way to prevent a defendant from being able to pay attorneys and, therefore, makes it easier for prosecutors to coerce innocent defendants into a guilty plea.

We are now witnessing the expansion of Obama's Kill List. The list began under the Bush regime as a rationale for murdering suspect citizens of countries with which the US was not at war. The Obama regime expanded the scope of the list to include the execution, without due process of law, of US citizens accused, without evidence presented in court, of association with terrorism. The list quickly expanded to include the American teen-age son of a cleric accused of preaching jihad against the West. The son's "association" with terrorism apparently was his blood relationship to his father.

As Glenn Greenwald recently wrote, the power of government to imprison and to murder its citizens without due process of law is the certain mark of dictatorship. Dictatorship is government unconstrained by law. On February 10 the Wall Street Journal revealed that the Obama dictatorship now intends to expand the Kill List to include those accused of acting against foreign governments. Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an "Algerian militant" accused of planning the January attack on an Algerian natural gas facility, has been chosen as the threat that is being used to expand Obama's Kill List to include participants in the internal disputes and civil wars of every country.

If the Obama regime is on the side of the government, as in Algeria, it will kill the rebels opposing the government. If the Obama regime is on the side of the rebels, as in Libya, it will kill the government's leaders. Whether Washington sends a drone to murder Putin and the president of China remains to be seen. But don't be surprised if Washington has targeted the president of Iran.

The Houston City Council passed an ordinance meant to help track down criminals who try to resell stolen valuables. Gold-buying businesses will now be required to photograph and fingerprint sellers as well as photograph the items that are being sold to the dealer.

Torture doesn't necessarily have to deal with physical pain. The US military have used Christian heavy metal music by the band Demon Hunter after rockers Metallica asked they stop using their recordings on prisoners.

The US Navy SEAL involved in the killing of Osama bin Laden told Esquire magazine that prior to using Demon Hunter recordings, the commandoes used Metallica music to pull information out of Iraqi prisoners.

"When we first started the war in Iraq we were using Metallica music to soften people up before we interrogated them," the spokesperson said.

World food prices stabilised in January after falling in the previous three months as a rebound in oils prices offset declines in cereals and sugar, the United Nations' food agency said on Thursday.

The FAO Food Price Index, which measures monthly price changes for a basket of cereals, oilseeds, dairy, meat and sugar, averaged 210 points in January, unchanged from December, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said.

The Rome-based agency also raised its view of world cereal output in 2012 to 2.302 billion tonnes, up 20 million tonnes from its previous forecast.

Its outlook for world cereal stocks by end of season in 2013 remained unchanged at 495 million tonnes, which will be down 3 percent from their opening level.

Ben Zygier, Melbourne man known as Prisoner X, also questioned by reporter over spying before death in 2010

Extraordinary new details emerged on Wednesday about the alleged double life of Ben Zygier - known as "Prisoner X" - an Australian-Israeli national and reported Mossad agent, who died after being secretly detained in an Israeli prison in 2010.

In the midst of an escalating diplomatic storm over the 34-year-old's treatment and the revelation that he was being investigated by Australian authorities as a suspected Israeli agent who used Australian passports for operations, it emerged that he was confronted shortly before his arrest by an Australian journalist who accused him of being a spy.

As the scandal over Zygier's suicide, while being held incommunicado in Ayalon prison, continued to grow in Israel and Australia, it was also revealed by Australian news organisations that he was under investigation by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation [ASIO] as one of three citizens suspected of using of Australian passports on behalf of Mossad.

More details of the case emerged as the Israeli government partially lifted its blanket ban on reporting any details of Zygier's imprisonment, first imposed by an Israeli court after his arrest.

The mother of a girl who was allegedly sexually assaulted at the Martin De Porres Academy in New York says that police walked away from the investigation because her daughter and her attackers all have "low IQs."

The 15-year-old girl was attacked during a science class on May 8, The New York Daily News reported Tuesday after obtaining internal police documents from the mother's attorney.

Two mentally challenged boys forced her to perform oral sex, then tried to have anal sex with her. All the while, a third assailant "banged her on the head" in an effort to keep her pinned down, the News reported. When the school's social worker informed the girl's mother of what happened, she went to a hospital and got the police involved.

In one of President Barack Obama first acts in the White House, he ordered the closure of the CIA's so-called "black-site" prisons, where terror suspects had been held and, sometimes, tortured. The CIA says it is "out of the detention business," as John Brennan, Obama's pick to head the agency, recently put it.

But the CIA's prisons left some unfinished business. In 2009, ProPublica's Dafna Linzer listed more than thirty people who had been held in CIA prisons and were still missing.

Some of those prisoners have since resurfaced, but at least twenty are still unaccounted for.

Warning that cyberattacks pose a danger to US security, President Barack Obama signed an executive order designed to better protect critical infrastructure from computer hackers.

Obama, in his annual State of the Union speech to a joint session of the US Congress, said the United States is facing a "rapidly growing threat from cyber-attacks."

"We know hackers steal people's identities and infiltrate private email," he said. "We know foreign countries and companies swipe our corporate secrets.

"Now our enemies are also seeking the ability to sabotage our power grid, our financial institutions, and our air traffic control systems," Obama said.

"We cannot look back years from now and wonder why we did nothing in the face of real threats to our security and our economy."

Obama said his executive order would "strengthen our cyber defenses by increasing information sharing, and developing standards to protect our national security, our jobs, and our privacy."

Audio recording purporting to be of police scanner conversation during raid includes line 'we're gonna go forward ... with the burn', although this may be reference to tear gas

A six-day hunt for a former policeman suspected of a killing spree in California ended on Wednesday when a cabin in the mountains above LA went up in flames.

A body suspected to be that of Christopher Dorner was found in the ruins of the building. Dorner is suspected to have killed four people in a vendetta against LA police officers and their families; the fourth was an officer from San Bernardino County Sherrif's department killed in a shootout at the cabin on Tuesday night.

Dorner had threatened to bring "warfare" to the LAPD, having claimed he had been the subject of racism when he was sacked from his job as a policeman there. Rory Carroll has the full story.

It is not yet clear how the fire at the cabin was started, but there is speculation that the police's actions triggered the fire.

The audio track of this video purports to be the conversation on police scanners as they surrounded the cabin where Dorner was hiding. The Guardian cannot confirm that the audio track is a genuine recording of the police scanner.

Dozens of alleged sexual abuse victims of the late BBC entertainer Jimmy Savile are suing both the British broadcaster and Savile's estate, a lawyer said Wednesday.

A recent police investigation, conducted after Savile's death, suggested that the DJ and children's entertainer could be among the most prolific abusers in the country's history.

Some of alleged sexual assaults occurred on BBC premises, police said.

Alan Collins, of the law firm Pannone, said it had prepared 31 cases so far against Savile's estate "and others including the BBC."

"The purpose of issuing the writ is to protect our clients' position and to seek management directions from the court to ensure the claims are administered as efficiently as possible," Collins said in a statement.

The attorney said he could not comment in detail about the nature of the cases or the allegations, but said they "range in seriousness from inappropriate behavior to serious sexual abuse."

An anonymity order has been put in place "given the highly sensitive nature of the case," the law firm said.